


Linear Equations

by bending_sickle



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-04
Updated: 2014-08-04
Packaged: 2018-02-11 17:59:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2077674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bending_sickle/pseuds/bending_sickle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles copes with his father's death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Linear Equations

Stiles thinks about lines.

He thinks about how they go on forever, how Euclid said they had _breadthless_ length and how the first time Stiles read that, his eyes flicked over the page so fast that he thought he’d read _breathless_ instead.

He tries not to think about breathlessness.

He thinks about how lines are everywhere, in the walls of his house, the lay of the town. They’re on faces, _laugh lines_ and _worry lines_ and all manner of other lines that bring life to familiar faces. They’re even etched on the skin of his palm. _Life lines_ , and isn’t that a laugh.

They’re even in our words, peppering phrases. Lines get draw and dropped, run down and read between, they get fed and they get crossed. Stiles can come up with dozens of idioms wrapped around lines with hardly a thought, and come up with a couple dozen in the next breath. He can’t _think_ for lines.

 _First line._ Lacrosse. Being on the team, scoring a goal, hearing voices cheering out his name. 

_My son is on the field._

Stiles reaches for his tie and stands in front of the mirror. He doesn’t look up.

His tie is a mess of lines. It should be a contradiction, because lines are practically the definition of order. Just one thing, going on forever, coming from forever. Immutable.

_Finish line._

But lines don’t finish. Not in theory. Not really. 

The lines around his neck and down his chest - myriad shades of grey on black - crisscross over each other. Aside from the lines there’s no pattern, no order, and they grey takes over some portions of the tie and leaves other corners dark and empty. Stiles wraps the lines around each other, intersecting planes and creating curves. 

_Put your neck on the line._

Stiles tugs the knot up close to his throat and thinks about line-line intersections. Two lines destined to meet, their very nature making it _impossible_ for them not to meet. Some people are like that, walking around with lines at their core. They’ll have that one aspect of themselves - personality, responsibility, loyalty, duty - that means you know, just know in which direction they’re going to run. 

Sometimes, the intersection is a point, solid and present. In theory, on paper, the lines keep going, like the intersection never happened, like they didn’t just barrel through another line in the void. Sometimes the intersection is an empty set, zero. He wonders what keeps the lines going then, once they’ve hit that vacuum. 

Stiles shakes out his jacket and slips it on, pulling on the edges and sleeves and seeing yet more lines. He tries to ignore the colour.

Most times, when two lines meet, they do hit something. On paper, the lines keep going. In real life, sometimes one of those lines drops to the ground. It’s messy and it hurts and it’s everything falling apart over one simple intersection and it’s an empty set all wrapped up in the blink of an eye.

He flinches, standing alone in his room, dressed in black but no Johnny Cash, and thinks about other lines.

_Line of duty._

_Line of fire._


	2. Of Sound Mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scott worries about Stiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. ― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Stiles was starting to scare Scott. Like, _really_ scare him.

It scared him more than the thought that the sheriff actually sat down one day and wrote out a will. Actually sat down and contemplated what would happen if he ever died. Scott could see it clearly in his head: the wooden table, the papers strewn everywhere, and depending when exactly this happened, a tumbler of whiskey. He’s pretty sure about the whiskey, in fact, because he’s pretty sure this happened just after Stiles’ mom died.

But the fact that Stiles’ dad actually _sat down_ and thought and decided and _wrote down_ what he wanted to happen if -

It wasn’t anything supernatural, it wasn’t anything to do with werewolves. It was just people being people, which includes people being _horrible_ and shooting their way out of a robbery. And because Stiles’ dad was the sheriff and doing his job, the people were shooting at _him_ and -

And here they were, with Scott’s mom as Stiles’ legal guardian and his best friend sitting at the dinner table every night and sleeping in the guest room which was now _his_ room and having breakfast with him every morning and the two of them going to school in Stiles’ Jeep.

And Stiles was scaring him.

Because at dinner or breakfast or in the Jeep, when they were alone or at school, his best friend wasn’t talking, wasn’t even fidgeting, and it was so _scary_ to watch him be so still. It’d gotten to the point where Scott crouched by the door to the guestroom - no, _Stiles’_ room - and pressed his ear to the floor, werewolf senses on maximum, and _listened._

And nothing. No sound, no movement, no nothing. It was as if Stiles just disappeared behind the door.

Mom caught him at it last night and made a pained sort of face, one she’d been making a lot these past few weeks, and gently pulled him up off the floor.

Sometimes Scott thought about breaking through the door. Sometimes, when Stiles made his usual - _new_ \- half-shrug and say how he didn’t care or didn’t mind or _whatever, dude,_ Scott had to curl his hands into fists to keep from shaking this person who wasn’t Stiles anymore and get his friend back.

But it wasn’t his friend who was gone, it was his friend’s father, so Scott dug his claws into his palms and gave as much support as Stiles was willing to take.


	3. I’ve Been Out Walking (I Don’t Do Too Much Talking)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> …the woods are the only place I can see a clear path. - Captain Malcolm Reynolds, Firefly “Serenity” (1x01-02)

The first time Derek caught wind of Stiles, the moon was in its first quarter. The air was autumn crisp, blowing in on a soft breeze from across the ravine. On nights like these, sounds and scents carried well. On other nights, hot still ones, all he would catch were the strong notes, whereas on wets ones, everything came to him muted and wrapped in the scent of earth. On nights like these, though, the ripples traveling across the world reached Derek whole, full of nuances and sharp edges.

So when he leaned against a tree trunk, reveling in the feel of the woods and the night and the hum of the moon, and breathed deep, he got a noseful of _Stiles_. He caught the salt of cooling sweat and the dust of the Jeep, spiced deodorant and teenage boy and the ever-present werewolf tang of Scott. He caught new smells, too: a lemon-scented laundry detergent, the sting of hospital antiseptic and the musty smell of an unused room. The smells were all wrapped up with a hint of gun oil and aftershave that had always clung to the sheriff’s jacket.

Derek let his head fall back again the tree trunk and closed his eyes, trying to build an image up from the smells, imagining Stiles living with the McCalls, being the third wheel, the new son, the live-in best friend. He wondered whether the change - the absence of any memory of his father - was a blessing for Stiles or just another reminder of everything that was gone. He tried not to think about those first weeks in New York, how his chest tightened every time he caught the scent of smoke and ash that clung to his clothes, and how it hurt even more when he smelled nothing but soap.

Derek pushed himself off the the trunk and scented the air. This time he caught a whiff of stirred mud and wet jeans, putting Stiles’ location near the small creek. With a huff of annoyance, wondering what harebrained misadventure the boy was chasing now.

***

He found Stiles ankle-deep in the water, kicking out submerged stones and completely ignoring the fact that he was in the woods in the middle of the night. Even if the kid hadn’t known about werewolves, he sure as hell knew there were mountain lions. What was he even _thinking?_

Derek was just about to leap down the bank and haul Stiles by the scruff of his neck all the way back to the city when something in the boy’s stance made him reconsider. He moved forward quietly and crouched by a bush, watching Stiles as he made his way upstream. From this angle he could see the teen’s face, see the lips pressed in a tight line, the eyes glued to the muddied water. He took in the rest of the sight, the sheriff jacket hanging loosely on the boyish frame, the thin shoulders hunched underneath and the clenched hands thrust deep into pockets. 

He waited until Stiles reached him, rubbing the heel of his palm against his eye and barely paying attention to where he was going. Derek smelled the salt before he saw the smudged tear tracks. As Stiles walked past him, feet sloshing in the water, Derek stood up and followed.

The boy needed to walk, needed to kick at stones and drag his feet through mud. Needed to be alone with the jacket on his shoulders. That was fine. Derek understood grief. He was just going to make sure Stiles didn’t get himself killed in the process.

***

Stiles didn’t walk the forest every night, probably because the McCalls were reluctant to let him out of their sight, but he did come out to the woods often enough for Derek to sit out on a rocky outcrop and face the breeze, nose twitching for the teen’s scent. He stayed clear of the creek, probably having gotten hell over the ankle-deep mud he must have dragged back home, and took a new path each time, weaving through trees and slipping down hills. Derek followed from a distance, senses tuned to the noises and scents of the woods, glancing at Stiles every once in a while to make sure he was still healthy and whole.

After a few nights of this, Scott finally caught on to Stiles’ night walks and stormed up to Derek’s door, demanding that Derek drop everything and help him. The boy could never just ask for anything, instead opting for laying on guilt and threats, all bark and never any bite.

When he finally stopped, Derek explained that yes, he knew Stiles was wandering around his woods at night and that, no, he didn’t want Stiles to end up dying from exposure or breaking his neck, that he had enough suspicious activity happen on his property as it was. (That last bit didn’t go down too well with Scott, but then it wasn’t his backyard where arson and murders had been committed.)

Derek let Scott pretend he’d won and agreed to “start” following Stiles.

***

One week in to Stiles’ midnight wanderings and Derek was seriously considering doing something. There was giving someone space and then there was letting them walk themselves off a cliff. In the woods, the boy’s walks were spiraling into some sort of blind man’s bluff to the point that Derek found himself almost _hovering_ , thinking at any moment he’d hear the snap of bone over a misplaced root. From what he could glean off Scott, Stiles wasn’t getting any better outside of the woods - “freakishly quiet” was Scott’s diagnosis.

Maybe it was the coming full moon itching beneath his skin, but if Derek thought that if he saw Stiles so much as stumble tonight, he really would grab him by the neck and haul him out of the woods. He hadn’t thought much further than that - where would he take the kid, what would he say - but he was tired of shadowing Stiles and seeing the same hurt every night.

There was no night breeze tonight and Derek wasn’t picking up any of Stiles’ scent. He had heard the Jeep’s engine, though, stopping as it always did somewhere on the edge of the woods on the long stretch of empty road, so he knew Stiles was walking tonight. Derek gave a frustrated flex of his fingers, feeling the claws straining against his control. He decided to run along the periphery of his territory, hoping to catch wind of Stiles before he did anything stupid.

When he finally caught Stiles’ scent, Derek frowned and picking up his speed, racing up familiar trails until he reached his own house. Stiles was sitting there on the porch railings, swinging his leg and picking at the charred wood with a thumbnail. Derek stood watching him for a while, too used to being Stiles’ forest shadow to take the first step out into the open. 

When it was clear that Stiles wasn’t moving from the porch, Derek walked out of the woods and slowly made his way up to the house. Stiles’ foot missed a beat in its swinging but other than that, the teen didn’t acknowledge Derek’s presence. Derek leaned against a column and crossed his arms over his chest, looking down at Stiles, who still hadn’t looked up and instead kept digging his thumbnail into the soft burnt black wood. Derek watched him.

"I’m an orphan." It was loud and sudden in the cold night air and Derek flinched. He waited for Stiles to say more, but the boy’s face was still. His leg kept twitching and his fingers kept prodding at the wood. Derek realized that there would be nothing else coming, not now, not tonight at least. This wasn’t Stiles breaking down. Derek shifted his weight against the column, his shoulders loosening, and said, "So am I." 

Stiles finally looked up at him then and for one moment they understood each other completely.


End file.
